RUTHFULLY YOURS

With June behind us, so is the first half of 2017, a year that seems to have just begun, yet which has brought so much news.

Mainstream media has assumed a Potemkin village-like stance – twisting news to corroborate a prescribed narrative. James Comey’s testimony before the Senate (see my TOTD “The Dystopian World of James Comey,” June 19, 2017) began as an investigation into alleged Russian interference in last year’s election, but then had to adjust, as Comey suggested that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch needed scrutinizing for persuading him to refer to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server as a “matter.” Muddying the waters further, it was disclosed that then President Obama tried to put a lid on probing Russian interference last fall, when it seemed probable that Mrs. Clinton would win the Presidency. In Georgia’s sixth district, Republican Karen Handel overcame a $30 million spending campaign by Democrat Jon Ossoff to keep Tom Price’s seat in Republican hands. DNC Chair Tom Perez blamed the loss on gerrymandering, while mainstream media took succor from the fact that Democrats narrowed the size of the loss; though they skipped over the inconvenient fact that Congressional wins in Georgia and South Carolina were by wider margins than that achieved by the President in November.

The Senate healthcare bill was released by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but a full vote in the Senate was delayed until after the July 4th recess. Unilateralism, as we saw in the previous Administration, encourages partisanship. In 2009, with 60 Democrat Senators, it took 18 months to pass the Affordable Care Act, and it was passed without a single Republican vote. The insufferable Nancy Pelosi, then House Speaker, said we would have to pass the bill to see what was in it. The American people would like the Party’s to work together, but the media knows that bad news (partisanship and bickering) sells better than good news (reconciliation and concessions). In the meantime, the Affordable Care Act is in trouble. An article in the June 9th The New York Times reported that by next year no insurance companies would be operating in 45 counties in the U.S., and that 1,388 counties will only have one plan. For left-leaning Democrats, the only option to a failing ObamaCare is a single-payer system – socialized medicine. For right-leaning Republicans, the only answer is repeal, and replace later. Neither is good. The best would be for the two Party’s to find a bipartisan path – seek common ground, fix what needs to be fixed, eliminate what’s wrong, work on tort reform and allow insurance companies to compete across state borders. But that is not what Party leaders want, nor is it what the media prefers.

So here’s the latest big “collusion” story that has been, er, broken by the Wall Street Journal.

About ten days before he died in mid-May, an 81-year-old man who did not work for the Trump campaign told the Journal he had speculated that, but did not know whether, 33,000 of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails had been hacked from her homebrew server. The now-deceased man, “a longtime Republican opposition researcher” named Peter W. Smith, had theorized that the e-mails must have been stolen, “likely by Russian hackers.” But he had no idea if this was actually so, and he himself certainly had nothing to do with stealing them.

Smith’s desire to obtain the hacked emails, if there were any, peaked around Labor Day 2016 — i.e., during the last weeks of the campaign. This was many months after the FBI had taken physical custody of Clinton’s homebrew server and other devices containing her e-mails. It was also two months after the Bureau’s then-director, James Comey, had told the country that the FBI had found no evidence that Clinton had been hacked . . . but that her carelessness about communications security, coupled with the proficiency of hackers in avoiding detection, meant her e-mails could well have been compromised throughout her years as secretary of state.

In other words, Peter W. Smith was one of about 320 million people in the United States who figured that Clinton’s e-mails had been hacked — by Russia, China, Iran, ISIS, the NSA, the latest iteration of “Guccifer,” and maybe even that nerdy kid down at Starbucks with “Feel the Bern” stickers on his laptop.

Besides having no relationship with Trump, Smith also had no relationship with the Russian regime. Besides not knowing whether the Clinton e-mails were actually hacked, he also had no idea whether the Kremlin or anyone close to Vladimir Putin had obtained the e-mails. In short, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you whether Trump and Putin were colluding with each other because he wasn’t colluding with either one of them.

But — here comes the blockbuster info — Smith was colluding with Michael Flynn. Or at least he kinda, sorta was . . . except for, you know, the Journal’s grudging acknowledgement that, well, okay, Smith never actually told the paper that Flynn was involved in what the report calls “Smith’s operation.”

Huh?

If you’re confused, I’d ordinarily suggest that you go back and read the report a time or two. But life is short and rereading would not much clarify this spaghetti bowl hurled against the wall, in the hope that some of the Flynn sauce might stick.

Flynn, of course, is the retired army general who became a top Trump campaign surrogate, and who, later and fleetingly, was President Trump’s national security adviser. As the press likes to say, Flynn was sacked over his contacts with Russia, which were the subject of an FBI investigation. What they unfailingly fail to add is that (a) Flynn was fired not because he had contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak but because he misled Vice President Mike Pence about the substance of them; (b) there was nothing inappropriate about Flynn’s having discussions with foreign counterparts during the Trump transition; (c) the FBI investigation targeted not Flynn but Kislyak, who, as an agent of a foreign power, was under FBI surveillance when he spoke with Flynn; and (d) therefore, the FBI recorded the Flynn-Kislyak communications and knew that Flynn had made no commitment to address Russian objections to sanctions imposed by President Obama (i.e., there was no quid pro quo for Russia’s purported contribution to Trump’s election).

General Flynn is loathed by Obama, who fired him as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency; by the Obama-era intelligence-agency chiefs, whom Flynn called out for politicizing intelligence reporting; and by the FBI, against whom Flynn supported an agent who was claiming sexual discrimination. The Obama Justice Department was giddy over the prospect of making a criminal case against Flynn: dispatching the FBI to interrogate him over the Kislyak conversations, and even weighing an indictment of Flynn under the Logan Act, an unconstitutional 18th-century law that bars Americans from free-lancing in foreign policy — a law that is never invoked, has never been successfully prosecuted, and would be especially ludicrous to apply to a transition official.

Flynn, whose judgment leaves much to be desired, has made himself an easy target. Putting aside whether the FBI had a good reason to interrogate him as if he were a criminal suspect, he was reportedly no more candid with the agents than he was with Pence in recounting his Kislyak conversations. He also got grubby after leaving the military in 2014, starting a private intelligence agency that cashed in paydays from outfits tied to the unsavory regimes of Russia and Turkey. There are legal issues stemming from his apparent failures to register as a foreign agent and to disclose what he was paid. In addition, Flynn’s son became so notorious for trading in conspiracy theories that the Trump transition cut ties with him — imagine how out there you’d have to be to get booted from Trump World for incendiary tweeting!

If the White House payroll is a leading indicator of the president’s commitment to shrink government then voters have a reason to cheer. Projected four-year savings on the White House payroll could top $22 million. Savings come from President Trump’s refusal to take a salary as well as big reductions in other areas including the absence of czars, expensive “fellowships,” and spending on FLOTUS staff.

On Friday, the Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. (Search the recent Trump administration payroll data – and last two-years of the Obama administration – posted at OpenTheBooks.com.)

Here are some key findings:

There are 110 fewer employees on White House staff under Trump thanunder Obama at this point in their respective presidencies.
$5.1 million in payroll savings vs. the Obama FY2015 payroll. In 2017, the Trump payroll amounts to $35.8 million for 377 employees, while the Obama payroll amounted to $40.9 million for 476 employees (FY2015).
Nineteen fewer staffers are dedicated to The First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS). Currently, there are five staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 24 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).
Counts of the “Assistants to the President” – the most trusted advisors to the president – are the same (22) in both first-year Trump and Obama administrations. In the Trump White House, Steven Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Omarosa Manigault, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer and 17 others make salaries of $179,700. In Obama’s first-year, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel and twenty others held the title with top pay of $172,000.
The highest compensated White House Trump staffer? Mark House, Senior Policy Advisor, has a salary of $187,500. Mr. House is “on detail” from a federal agency which allows him to exceed the top pay-grade of $179,700. In Obama’s Administration (2009), David Marcozzi earned $193,000 “on detail” from Health and Human Services.

Our review of the Trump White House payroll confirms five staffers dedicated to First Lady Melania Trump. Highly criticized for her twenty-four assistants, advisors, schedulers, directors, deputies, advance aides, associates, social and press secretaries and other helpers, former First Lady Michelle Obama’s staff was only slightly larger than Laura Bush’s staff of eighteen.

These five White House employees serving First Lady Melania Trump include:

Lindsay Reynolds, Chief of Staff to the First Lady ($179,700);
Stephanie Grisham, Director of Communications for the First Lady ($115,000);
Anna Niceta, Social Secretary ($115,000)
Timothy Tripepi, Deputy Chief of Staff of Operations for the First Lady ($115,000);
Mary-Kathryn Fisher, Deputy Director of Advance for the First Lady ($77,000).

Starting in 2009, President Obama came under fire for hiring special initiative czars. We found no evidence of “czars” on Trump’s payroll. Examples of these White House czars included Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner ($172,000), Director of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Joshua DuBois ($98,000), White House Director of Urban Affairs Adolfo Carrion Jr ($158,500), and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle ($158,500).

Joel Zinberg, M.D., J.D., F.A.C.S., a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is a practicing surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital and an associate clinical professor of surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine.

In the near term, the health-care plan that the Senate released this week—officially, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA)—will provide stability to individual health-care markets and state governments. It commits to funding the cost-sharing reductions that insurers are required to provide, but which Congress had not funded adequately through 2019. This should calm insurers uncertain about staying in the individual-insurance markets. Anthem, a major insurance player in both the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces and Medicaid, has announced that the Senate bill “will markedly improve the stability of the individual market and moderate premium increases.” The Congressional Budget Office predicts that premiums will be 30 percent lower than under current law by 2020. The BCRA will also allow insurers to charge older enrollees up to five times what they charge 20-year-olds—the standard before the ACA—rather than the 3-to-1 limit that Obamacare imposes. This should make the market more attractive to insurers and insurance more affordable for young people, who have resisted signing up under the ACA.

The BCRA also delays the end of enhanced federal funding for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and begins phasing it out with a gradual reduction in the enhanced federal payment share between 2021 and 2024. States would be free after 2024 to continue coverage for the expanded population covered under the ACA, but at regular federal matching rates. This should give governors ample time to plan if and how they want to continue expanded Medicaid eligibility. It will also give them time to expand private insurance markets to those at or below the poverty line, since the BCRA removes the lower income limit on premium tax credits to purchase insurance. Adults displaced by the phase-out of the Medicaid expansion and residents of states that did not expand Medicaid could use these credits to purchase private insurance.

In the longer term, the BCRA makes it far more likely that Obamacare’s section 1332 “innovation waivers” can become effective tools for state-based experimentation and reforms to improve insurance coverage. These waivers let states modify or eliminate many central ACA provisions, including the rules regarding the premium tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies and which plans and essential health benefits (EHB) must be offered on the insurance exchanges. The BCRA ends ACA restrictions that have inhibited waiver applications. It also streamlines the application process and creates a $2 billion fund to motivate states to apply for waivers.

But the Congressional Budget Office’s prediction that the BCRA will lead to 22 million more uninsured by 2026 has dampened enthusiasm for the Republican proposal—even among Republicans. The problem is that the CBO’s estimates of coverage under current law are based on its March 2016 baseline, which is known to be inaccurate. The CBO predicts that the BCRA will decrease coverage in the non-group market, including marketplaces, by 7 million, yet concedes that “enrollment in the marketplaces under current law will probably be lower than was projected under March 2016 baseline used in this analysis.”

The CBO’s estimate that 15 million fewer people will be covered by Medicaid in 2026 as compared with current law is also suspect. About a third of this loss derives from people whom “CBO projects would, under current law, become eligible in the future as additional states adopted the ACA’s option to expand eligibility.” It’s unlikely that the 19 states that have thus far not expanded eligibility under the ACA would expand if the law remains unchanged, especially since, under Obamacare, states now have to start sharing some of the financial burden for these newly eligible enrollees with the federal government.

WASHINGTON—Cities and counties that don’t help federal immigration authorities could lose millions of dollars in federal grants under legislation that passed the House on Thursday, as Republicans ramp up their battle against so-called sanctuary cities.

The legislation represents the Republicans’ most aggressive effort yet to force local communities to cooperate with President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration-enforcement policies.

Mr. Trump and his administration regularly spotlight undocumented immigrants who commit crimes, and on Wednesday he met with their victims. After the bills passed Thursday, Mr. Trump said the “implementation of these policies will make our communities safer.”

The bill, along with a companion enforcement measure, represents a contrast with the comprehensive immigration legislation long pushed by Democrats and some Republicans. Those proposals typically combine enforcement measures with pro-immigrant provisions such as the legalization of people living in the U.S. illegally. But Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress have showed little interest in a bipartisan approach.

Both bills passed largely on party lines, and both are expected to face strong opposition in the Senate, where they would need Democratic support to pass.

The first bill, called the “No Sanctuary for Criminals Act,” primarily aims to persuade local jurisdictions to hold people in jail when asked to do so by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Proponents in the Trump administration and elsewhere say releasing criminals who should be deported makes communities less safe, They add that asking a jail to hold someone for up to 48 hours is a reasonable request.

“By flagrantly disregarding the rule of law, sanctuary cities are putting lives at risk and we cannot tolerate that,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.).

Many local communities don’t honor these ICE “detainer” requests today for a range of reasons. Some say cooperation would undermine trust in law enforcement in immigrant communities, making legal and illegal immigrants less likely to report crimes. Some cite court rulings that found local communities are liable if someone such as a U.S. citizen is wrongly held based on inaccurate information.

Under the legislation, jurisdictions would lose federal grants from the Justice and Homeland Security departments if they enact policies restricting assistance with the enforcement of federal immigration law. CONTINUE AT SITE

No immigrant who has come to America has had an easy beginning. The difficulties are reflected in learning a different language with its mind-boggling idioms, understanding a new culture, and ultimately needing to be self-sufficient. Often education in the immigrant’s country is insufficient or completely lacking. Even those who are well educated in their birth country need to return to school to become properly licensed according to American standards.

Yet “[b]etween 1850 and 1930, about one million Asians from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and India came to the United States. But by the second half of the 19th century a backlash had developed [.]” The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act created increasingly restrictive laws against Asians. At one point, a law passed by the California State Legislature and signed by the governor created a $50 tax per head for Chinese entering Californian ports that was to be paid within three days. The California Supreme Court later ruled the law unconstitutional.

This discrimination was not limited to the Chinese. In the early 20th century, “[h]otels and clubs refused Jews admittance, and universities established Jewish enrollment quotas. Industrialist Henry Ford, a popular public figure, openly expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.” A notorious incident of anti-Semitism took place in Georgia in 1913, when Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent, was convicted, on circumstantial evidence, of murdering a young girl and was lynched.

Then there was the “[d]iscrimination against Roman Catholics in the U.S. [which] began in the Colonial era, when Catholics were few in number. However, in the 1840s, the Catholic population expanded significantly when thousands of Irish Catholics immigrated to the U.S. following Ireland’s potato famine. In the late 1800s, a second flood of Catholic immigrants came from Eastern Europe and Italy. Protestants feared Catholics, coming from customs which included communal religious hierarchies, would not adapt to the individualism promoted by democracy.”

Furthermore, “[a]mong the Italian immigrants arriving in the late 1900s were large numbers of young men from southern Italy who hoped to earn money for the impoverished families they left behind. Discrimination against southern Italians was rampant. Newspapers fostered theories that Sicilians and other southern Italians were intellectually inferior to northern Europeans.”

So, sadly, discrimination has existed against many groups who eventually became Americans and shared in the American dream.

There are never excuses for the irrationality of prejudice. The latest shift in this country is where whites are now demonized in subtle and blatant ways just for being white. It is an idea being fostered in the halls of higher learning.

In the Pacific Standard Magazine of March/April 2017, an essay titled “The Mexican American Dream” begins with the following: “Despite the rhetoric and hate crimes, Mexican immigrants are poised to reframe American culture, if white people would only let them.” Clearly a provocative opener, it sets the stage for the “us against them” mentality that seems to be propelling all conversations these days. The narrative has become a brown-black vs. white storyline and has taken on a decidedly nasty racist overtone.

With this backdrop, the reader is supposed to feel an emotional angst for the protagonist of the article, named Vianney, who was born to “undocumented” parents. Her father had a drinking problem, and there was domestic violence. Despite drinking, taking drugs, and almost “flunking out of school,” Vianney was propelled into the Music Academy at the Colburn School in L.A., where she excelled. Noting the differences between the “world she had grown up and the [white] world of privilege, wealth, and status,” at one point, she “really wanted to be white.” Eventually, she “stopped trying to make herself seem white and started to embrace her Latina heritage.”

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump declared a new age of “energy dominance” by the U.S. on Thursday as he outlined plans to roll back Obama era restrictions and regulations meant to protect the environment.

In a speech at the Energy Department, the president promised to expand the country’s nuclear-energy sector and open up more federal lands and offshore sites to oil and natural-gas drilling.

Mr. Trump also celebrated his decision earlier this month to withdraw the U.S. from the 195-country Paris climate accord and the Environmental Protection Agency’s rescindment this week of the Obama administration’s clean-water rules that farmers and business groups found onerous.

“We don’t want to let other countries take away our sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump also issued a special permit authorizing the construction of a new pipeline between the U.S. and Mexico that would carry fuels across the border in Texas, the State Department said.

The president’s intent to resurrect coal and nuclear power comes as many other countries are trying to curb their use. He made only scant mention of renewable energy such as solar and wind power, which now account for 10% of total U.S. electricity generation and a far higher percentage in some European countries.

Mr. Trump’s speech caps a week the White House has devoted to energy issues. The proposals Mr. Trump laid out are in keeping with the more robust approach to energy extraction he promised during last year’s campaign and offer another instance of the new administration acting quickly to reverse his predecessor’s policies.

“We applaud President Trump’s support of energy policies that secure and expand U.S. energy supplies and position our country as a world supplier,” Barry Worthington, executive director of the U.S. Energy Association, said in a statement. “An all-of-the-above energy strategy… advances U.S. energy security, but it also protects our allies.”

Environmental groups criticized the moves as shortsighted and perilous for the environment. “Trump’s dirty energy nightmare is a wake-up call for the country,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We get the [environmental] harm, foreign countries get the power, and big oil, gas and coal take the profits.”

The Wilderness Society homed in on the Trump administration’s opening of more Arctic waters to exploration after President Barack Obama had excluded Arctic Ocean lease sales as one of his last moves in office.

Senate conservatives wish the health-care bill was more ambitious on deregulation, and so do we, though the benefits of its state waiver feature are underappreciated and worth more explanation. This booster shot of federalism could become the greatest devolution of federal power to the states in the modern era.

One of ObamaCare’s most destructive legacies is a vast expansion of federal control over insurance and medicine—industries that did not exactly lack supervision before 2010. This included annexing powers that traditionally belonged to states. The Obama Administration then used regulation to standardize insurers as public utilities and accelerate a wave of provider consolidation that has created hospital and physician oligopolies across the country.

Once in command, the federal government rarely eases off or returns control, but the Senate bill does. The Affordable Care Act included a process in which states could apply for permission to be exempted from some rules, but conditions are so onerous that these 1332 waivers have been mostly notional. The Senate Republican draft bill makes this process quicker, more flexible and broader, which could launch a burst of state innovation.

The Senate bill is broader than the House’s Meadows-MacArthur waivers that only apply to a few so-called Title I regulations. Creative Governors could use the 1332 exemptions to explore a wider variety of reforms to repair their individual insurance markets, lower premiums and increase access to care.

Introducing many competing health-care models across the country would be healthy. California and South Carolina don’t—and shouldn’t—have to follow one uniform prototype designed in Washington, and even a state as large as California doesn’t have the same needs from region to region.

If nothing else the repeal and replace debate has shown that liberals, conservatives and centrists have different health-care priorities, and allowing different approaches and experimentation would be politically therapeutic. The more innovative can become examples to those that stay heavily regulated.

Some conservatives in the Senate and the House are despondent because neither bill repeals the federal rules related to pre-existing conditions known as guaranteed issue and community rating. They’re right that these mandates are destructive. Community rating, which limits how much premiums can vary among people with different health status and risks, tends to blow up insurance markets, as ObamaCare is now showing.

But at least for now, conservatives have lost this political debate. There’s no Senate majority for catching the pre-existing conditions grenade, Governors aren’t hot on the idea either, and even insurers don’t want to return to the days of medical underwriting.

The Senate bet is that the 1332 waivers can help create enough of a recovery in insurance markets to overcome the distortions of these rules and bring down rates. The bill also relaxes ObamaCare’s age bands to a 5 to 1 ratio from a 3 to 1 ratio, meaning insurance for the oldest beneficiaries can be priced five times as high as for the youngest. Since age is a proxy for health risks and expenses, and a 5 to 1 ratio is close to the true actuarial cost of care, the policy result in practice is a wash.

Former President Barack Obama is joining the demagogic slugfest against the GOP’s latest bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. He claims the bill would “ruin Medicaid.”

Not so fast, Obama. Your health care law ruined Medicaid. Now, about half of all women who give birth in the United States are on Medicaid, a staggering figure.
The Republican bill, awaiting Senate action, will reform Medicaid, restoring its original mission and ensuring its future.

Medicaid was created in 1965 as a safety net for the poor. But Obamacare distorted it, edging the U.S. closer to a Medicaid-for-all or single-payer system. Swelling the Medicaid rolls — not making private insurance affordable — is the main way Obamacare dealt with the uninsured.

Almost 75 million people are now enrolled, 20 million more than in Medicare, the program for the elderly. If the repeal bill doesn’t pass, Medicaid enrollment will soar to 86 million by 2026, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released Monday.

Who’s picking up the tab for this vast Medicaid expansion? You. Worse, you pay twice — once as a taxpayer, and then again as an insurance consumer. Families with private insurance pay $1,500 to $2,000 or more in added premiums yearly already to keep Medicaid afloat. The more Medicaid expands, the higher their premiums will go. That’s because Medicaid shortchanges hospitals and doctors, paying less than the actual cost of care. They make up for it by shifting the costs onto privately insured patients. Ouch.

That cost shifting only works until Medicaid enrollment grows too large. The Mayo Clinic warned three months ago that Medicaid enrollment has reached the tipping point. The renowned clinic announced it will have to turn away some Medicaid patients or put them at the back of the line, behind patients with commercial insurance.

Years earlier, when Obamacare was still being debated in Congress, the dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Dr. Edward Miller, issued a similar warning: Allowing a vast expansion of Medicaid could have “catastrophic effects” at places like Hopkins.

His dire prediction came true. Obamacare loosened Medicaid eligibility rules and urged states to enroll as many people as possible, with Uncle Sam paying 100 percent of the tab until 2016 and 90 percent or more thereafter.

Medicaid enrollment spiked in many states, including New York, where it skyrocketed up by a third to 6.3 million. Blame the incentive to rake in federal dollars.

And waste money. Roughly 10.5 percent of Medicaid payments are in error. Any company with that record would be out of business.